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lindan, actually beer should be served warmer than "ice cold". In fact, a high quality craft brew is best at "cellar temperature" which is around 55 degrees F. The reason for this is that the cold numbs your taste buds and they don't sense anything. The warmer temps allow you to experience all of the subtle flavors that the brewer crafted into his beer. That's also why Bud, Miller and Coors (know as BMC, none of which should be labled as beer) have to be so cold to drink them. If you let them warm, they still wouldn't have any taste and people would quit buying them.

Well, it just so happens that I prefer my beer ice cold. Maybe to someone else it tastes better warmer but that doesn't affect me whatsoever.

Also, I keep some Stella Artois in my garage fridge for when my good neighbor drops in. That's his favorite beer and I like to have it on hand. (He occasionally helps me out and plows out my driveway in winter.)

First of all, As Martyn Cornwell points out, beer should never be drunk from the container in which it arrives. You should drink your beer from a glass. Of course, there are exceptions. If you're on the beach at a bar-b-que or if your drinking that pale, yellow stuff that has a low alcohol content that bar have for happy hour specials (I still can't call it beer). That said, I sometimes bottle my home brewed beer and when I do, I store it in a dark closet until I'm ready to cool it to drink. Light will destroy the flavor and aromas of the beer that the brewer has worked so hard to bring to you. For this reason, canned beer, when decanted, is better than bottled beer.

This is just not true for many of us.

I'm with Michaela on this one: I can taste the can. Be it beer, soda, canned goods, there is always a metallic tang for me that is not pleasant. For this reason bottled beer is always more preferable to me than canned, period.

As for the effects of light, my beer either sits in the carton or in my fridge so it is really a non-issue.

Nick Reynolds, aka "nickrey"

"My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four.Unless there are three other people." Orson WellesMy eG Foodblog

I think most brewers would do cans if they could. And those that don't would be on grounds of marketing and dogma. It's superior in most every aspect, except public opinion. There's a strong stigma there from decades of cheap swill because cans are more economical and ideal for mass production.

The reasons brewers traditionally go with bottles is a canning line is expensive, complicated, and takes up a lot of valuable space. Space that could be better used for beer brewing. At the minimum a manual commercial bottling station could basically fit in a phone booth. Until just a few years ago craft beer in cans was unheard of, but now they're making that investment.

But... in the end, all that matters is what the drinker's experience, so whatever floats your boat.